State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, citing an erosion of “public confidence,” is moving to remove a politically connected Brooklyn lawyer as receiver of Cypress Hills Cemetery.

Officials said Spitzer will file papers today asking Supreme Court Judge Richard Huttner to yank Ravi Batra from what has turned into an explosive case that has cast a spotlight on the patronage system in the Brooklyn courts.

“Various questions have been raised about the process and Mr. Batra’s role, which we think have undermined confidence on what has been going on at Cypress Hills,” said Scott Brown, a spokesman for Spitzer.

“We feel it is important that a new receiver be implemented.”

Batra, whose law firm employs Brooklyn Democratic leader Clarence Norman as a consultant, said he wouldn’t comment until the papers are actually filed.

Batra is at the center of a remarkably public squabble over patronage spoils that began with a Dec. 20, 1999, letter circulated by two longtime Brooklyn Democratic Party officials, lawyers Arnold Ludwig and Thomas Garry.

They charged that Batra was booting them from the Cypress Hills case because he wanted to grab the legal fees — as well as the receiver’s fees — for himself.

Batra countered that he dropped the two lawyers because they were incompetent.

Lawyers and court insiders have long whispered about the patronage system that encourages judges elected with the help of party organizations to dispense lucrative appointments to organization-favored lawyers.

But until Ludwig and Garry complained about being frozen out by Batra, despite their “unquestioned loyalty” to the Brooklyn Democratic Party, no one had spelled it out so starkly — much less in writing.

Spitzer’s move comes nearly six weeks after the state Cemetery Board voted to install a board of directors to run Cypress Hills.

Huttner, one of the judges closely linked to the Brooklyn Democratic organization, isn’t bound to honor Spitzer’s request.